aiza

“Whatever you want to call it: flying, sailing, surfing. It’s the way time moves differently when you’re caught up in the simple joy of being yourself. It’s what can happen when you make the decision to let go of criticism and worry and fear.”
― Lauren Graham, In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It

“But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank.”
― William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

“I ain’t complainin’ now,” Obadiah said. “Never been one to whine and make excuses. But it’s hard for peoples to be motivated to self-improvement when all the benefit goes to someone else. It’s hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you feel like somebody nailed your boots to the floor. That’s why the sharecroppin’ cabins of the South become the ghettos of the North. Well, nowadays the opportunity for black folks is here, opportunity I barely dreamed of. And lots of them has grabbed on and made somethin’ of their lives. But other folks is still in chains in their minds. My daddy used to say, ‘We’s a stolen people.’ When someone steals your property, that’s one thing. But when he steals you and turns you into property, it does something to a man that’s impossible for free folk to understand. It changes the way you look at yourself, and it gets passed on to your chillens and their chillens. See, when you’re a black man, you start thinking there’s nothin’ lower than you but the ground itself, and one day even that’s gonna be over you. So some folk just passes the time until they go to the ground or they start lookin’ to put other people under them.”
― Randy Alcorn, Dominion

“Sin makes us glory thieves...

At the bottom of a broken marriage, a shattered family, or a forsaken friendship you will always find stolen glory. We crave glory that does not belong to us, and we step on one another to get it. Rather than glorifying God by using the things he has given us to love other people,
we use people to get the glory we love. Sin causes us to steal the story and rewrite it with ourselves as the lead, and with our lives at center stage.

But there is only one stage and it belongs to the Lord. Any attempt to put ourselves in his place puts us in a war with him...

Sin has made us glory robbers. We do not suffer well, because suffering interferes with our glory. We do not find relationships easy, because others compete with us for glory. We do not serve well, because in our quest for glory, we want to be served.


But the story of Scripture is the story of the Lord's glory. It calls me to an agenda that is bigger than myself. It offers me something truly worth living for. The Redeemer has come so that glory thieves would joyfully live for the glory of Another. There is no deeper personal joy and satisfaction than to live committed to his glory. It is what we truly need.”
― Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: How to Help Others Change, Study Guide